


Variant/Anomaly/Deviation

by Corvid_Knight



Series: Mutantstuck [13]
Category: Homestuck, Marvel
Genre: Gen, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Misunderstandings, alternians do NOT have the same meaning of mutant as humans do, but like written by someone who hasn't really ever been in one, dadpoolstuck, gunshot wound, marvelstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-18 10:15:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18247790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: In which a troll who has recently ended up in the company of a group of aliens due to circumstances that demanded his departure from his home planet comes to several realizations, dealing with both his own emotions and differing linguistic customs.





	1. Chapter 1

You shouldn't fucking be here. 

Wait, no. _You_ should be fine with being in what amounts to a fucking war zone. You trained for this shit, right? Wasn't one of your fucking dreams as a wriggler to grow up and be one of Her Imperial Condescension's elite warriors? It was a stupid delusional dream—they'd cull you the _instant_ you slipped up in a sparring match and got yourself sliced open—but you still want through the motions. You're capable of holding your own in a fight. 

An Alternian fight, anyway. Which this isn't. This is some weirdass human thing where you're almost certain that the people shooting at you are technically the good guys. As in, they might be the same species as the guy at your side, but they give you a _definite_ drone vibe. 

It's fucking awful. You don't know why Dave seems as unperturbed as he does. 

Then again, he doesn't seem to have a problem with pulling you to one side or the other right before a bullet cracks through the meager cover the two of you have been dodging between for the past ten minutes. You're starting to wonder how the fuck humans survive—it's not like they keep the area immediately around their hives clear so they can see threats coming. There's not a decent line of sight from any of the buildings themselves at all. 

Of course, you know how humans survive this shit: they adapt, just like your species did, and they mold their fucking environment—maybe more successfully than your species did. The only predator you've seen in your perigees of being here is, well...other humans. 

Which. Yeah. Fuck. 

" _Down_!" Dave hisses it out this time as he dives down flat; you actually feel something too fucking fast and hot and small pass over your head as you join him on the grass. (The soft green grass. You're still not used to this shit.) "Shit shit _shit_ , dude, I fucked up, I didn't drop the phone close enough, this should've stopped by now, Hal should've dealt with them—" 

"For fuck's sake." You're an expert at wiggling around like a slitherbeast, for reasons that you prefer to keep to yourself; it's not even kind of difficult to bellycrawl the two feet or so that separates you from him, just barely prop yourself up on one elbow so you can reach over with the other hand and get your fingers all up in his fine white hair. (Your thinkpan stutters between _dumbass needs a haircut_ and _stars above, I wish he had horns._ ) "Shoosh." 

He does. For like, a second. 

Then he raises his head and scowls at you. His shades are askew; you can see those _eyes_ for once, like a harbinger of what yours are going to look like in maybe three sweeps. If you fucking survive that long. "This ain't a _shoosh_ situation—" 

"It's a shoosh situation if I say it is, fucknuts!" 

" _Fucknuts_? God, if I get out of here I'm gonna kick Wade's ass for teaching you tha—" 

The gunshot that cuts Dave off doesn't sound like any weapon you've ever heard, and you've been subjected to Eridan's entire fucking collection _and_ Latula's attempts to convince Kankri that he should carry a firearm for the irony of it. Dave seems to recognize it, though; behind the crooked shades his eyes go wide and even more terrified than they were before, and even before you can take your hand away from his head he's moving. You don't even have time to react before he's dragged you up to your feet and a couple steps away; by the time you open your mouth to ask _what the fuck_ he—

The explosion feels like it ruptures your fucking eardrums. It probably doesn't; you've seen trolls who died from pure sound, and there was a hell of a lot more blood than you're feeling on yourself right now. You still can't fucking hear anything but ringing, can't see anything period; the noise came with a flash of unbearably bright light too, like whatever they're using was designed to keep you immobile and placid.   
But hey, you're not a fucking milkbeast. 

You snarl and grab for the sickles hooked into your waistband—and they're not there, of _course_ they're not there, one more fucking casualty of people on this planet being fucking _nervous_ around _mutants_ with _weapons_. Thanks a fucking lot, D; what the fuck did he think was going to happen if he left you with no way to defend yourself? You're going to die, you're going to fucking _die_ with your hands as empty as a newly molted wiggler's, your fucking mutant blood is going to soak into the dirt of this alien world and they'll scorch it with fire until there's nothing left of you—

Dave's familiar weight slams into you, knocking you off your feet. Your head hits something harder than grass. You very dimly hear one more fucking gunshot through the irritating whine in your head. 

All that happens in pretty much the same instant. 

The next explosion is loud enough to actually make a noticeable impact on your reality, which is saying something; you're still deaf enough to not be able to hear your own highly imaginative swearing as you blink until you can see something other than blinding white. (It's blue streaked with white. You're on your back looking up at the sky.) Your head aches, but not enough to keep you from struggling back to your feet. 

Okay, so the weirdass black-and-white vehicle that was the culprit for the whole death-by-gunfire attempt is...kind of gone now. There's pieces of it, but nothing large enough to be recognizable; the main reason you know where it was is because a section of hedge is on fire across the street. 

Fuck. You need to remember to never get on Hal's bad side. Holy fucking shit. 

"See, Dave, it's fucking _fine_ —" Ugh. Your voice sounds fucking horrible through possibly-damaged eardrums. That's not why you stop, though—you stop because you just turned around, away from the car that Hal just blew up. 

You turn towards Dave, and he's...

He's. He's standing there, not looking at you. You don't know where his shades went, but they're gone, and his head's lowered, because he's looking down instead of at you, he's looking down at his hands, and his hands—

They're red. Fuck, there's red on his hands because he touched his chest, and there's red on his shirt starting high up by his throat and all the way down to his fucking stomach already, there's red all over him and your thinkpan won't fucking process this shit. You can't even think the word _blood_ because you've never seen that much of it before. 

Not in his color. Not in _your_ color. 

" _Dave_!" 

You can hear your voice, and it's a fucking _keen_. It horrifies you as much as the blood soaking Dave's shirt does; you can't make that sound, you're not fucking allowed, that's only for quadmates and you can't have any. 

And your own horror at yourself _disgusts_ you. How _dare_ you doubt him? He fucking saved you; how the fuck can you freeze at the implication that you've settled into a quadrant with him at some fucking point? What the fuck is wrong with you? 

Whatever it is, it's not so severe that it stops you from catching Dave when his legs go out from under him. Well, kind of catching him; you keep him from collapsing on the grass, but you stagger under his weight and the weight of your own fucking fear and go down as well, an awkward sprawl that ends with your legs curled under you and Dave laid across your lap like this is an illustration on the cover of a doomed-love romance novel. 

Fuck, you wish you hadn't thought that. It makes the moment when you touch his face and realize his eyes are open and fixed so much worse, makes it even more terrifying when you get your arms around him and can't find any sign of the slight movement of his breathing. 

No. 

This can't be happening. 

You try to say his name again and the sound that comes out isn't recognisable as any kind of language. It doesn't get any reaction from Dave, either; he's not fucking _breathing_ , of course he wouldn't react—

This is the point where you hug him to your chest, curl yourself around him, close your eyes, and stop thinking. 

Then someone touches you, says something, tries to pull your arms loose from Dave, and you really _have_ to move, right? They're not fucking taking him. You'll kill anyone who tries. 

Unfortunately, your completely fucking inadequate claws just skate across the red-and-black leather of Wade's mask, and when you go to try and latch onto his throat because even if you can't claw him open you can still strangle the fucker who's trying to take _your_ human away, he just grabs your wrists and pulls, lifting you to your feet. 

Well, lifting you up, anyway. You're not fucking standing, that's for sure—if you were capable of rational thought right now, you'd be aware that you look like a hooked fish, suspended by both wrists, thrashing and snarling helplessly as Wade holds you up and away from Dave. 

Fuck! 

There's nothing you can do. 

When you go limp and start keening again, Wade actually loses his grip on you. The ground is still hard, that much hasn't changed, but you don't even bother to rearrange yourself into some kind of position that doesn't hurt like hell; what the fuck does it matter if this hurts? 

"Shit," Wade mutters. "Karkat, _stay._ " 

(Like you want to move. Like you want to do anything, ever again.) 

Actually, you do move. A little. Enough to watch Wade squat down next to Dave—who still hasn't moved, who you know _won't_ move—and take one limp bloody hand, raise Dave's arm and check the little timekeeper strapped around it. 

After a second, Wade sighs. "Okay, alright, awesome—" 

When he slides his hands under Dave to lift him up, you realize what's going on. _Fuck_. 

Hal tackles you about half a second before you would have lunged at Wade. You don't even know where the fuck he came from, but it doesn't really matter—Hal outweighs you by just enough that you can't get him off without resorting to actual bodily injury. 

Which you're not going to do. This is Dave's family, basically a special kind of quadmate that you don't even have, you're not going to—

Yeah, screw that. You growl at him (as fucking if he's going to register that as the warning it is) and then twist to sink your teeth into his arm. 

Hal yelps. You taste blood for barely long enough to register that weird metallic flavor that just screams _alien_ to you; then you taste something that's less a taste and more of an apocalyptic experience. Like having Sollux discharge the biggest psionic jolt he can produce, right into your fucking pan. 

So yeah, being conscious is no longer an option right now. Just fucking great.


	2. Chapter 2

You've been crying the whole time you've been out of it—you know that even before you wake up enough to open your eyes. That's the only thing you're really sure of at this point, since you have no clue where you are, how you got here, or who it is you're curled around and clinging to like a grub grieving his lusus. 

Whoever it is is actually holding onto you, so maybe you're not about to get in another fucking fight. You're not really sure how you feel about that, though. Part of you just wants to either hurt someone or actually get culled; one way you get to take out some of the unpleasant emotions you have going right now, the other...

You wouldn't have to think about Dave. 

Dave. 

Okay, you're awake enough for a grating whine to rise from the middle of your chest at the thought of him. It starts out fairly quiet, but the person holding you still jerks and shifts and grabs for your wrists again. 

"Karkat? Hey. Karkat. Open your eyes." 

That's Dirk, probably. Or Hal. They fucking sound exactly the same, you don't know. Also you're not doing that. Opening your eyes. Fuck no. 

"You need to not scream right now, Karkat, you're going to get us kicked out—" 

"They can't kick us out, dumbass, they have our brother—" Okay, _that's_ Hal. Dirk never sounds that upset. 

"Yeah, and we're two minors who've spent a solid hour dodging questions about where our parents are, so just _maybe_ we should lie low until Dave gets out of surgery?" 

"They're buying the whole D thing, it's—" 

"If you guys are gonna argue with each other, lemme have Karkat before you get him started crying again." Can Roxy not see that you're _already_ crying? "Here—Dirk—" 

"Yeah, okay." Dirk's hands leave your back, go to where you're clinging to his neck. After a second spent futilely prying at you as you hold on that much tighter, Hal's hands join Dirk's, managing to break your grip so Roxy can pull you over to her instead. 

"Karkat? Hey, Dave's gonna be okay." When you just whine and curl into a tighter ball—that's a fucking lie, you saw him, you saw the fucking blood—she sighs and threads one hand through your hair, soft fingertips just barely brushing your horns. 

You fucking hate that that contact is enough to still your heartbroken whimpers for a second. Stupid fucking biology. 

"Dirk," Roxy says, "you checked to see if he got hurt, right?" 

"Of course we checked him, Roxy—Hal zapped the shit out of him, we weren't sure he was still breathing—" 

"I didn't mean to! He bit me, you _know_ pain makes me lose control—" 

"I'm not attacking you, Hal, jesus. But he's not hurt—Dave took both the bullets." 

He did, didn't he? The noise that comes out of you at that reminder is significantly louder than the ones you've been making so far; Roxy hugs you up to her chest in response to it, shushing you like she's palecrushing really fucking hard. 

That concept actually makes everything worse. Fuck. 

Someone else's hand comes down on your head, actually seeking out your horns to quiet you that little bit. Again, you absolutely hate that it works. 

"My turn," Rose says, calm and level and right next to your ear, like she's kneeling beside the chair Roxy's sitting in instead of sitting in one next to you. "Karkat?" 

Unlike the others, she's not going to get distracted and let you sink back into yourself. You have to actually answer, and not in the wordless warbling growl that comes out instead of words on your first try. 

"Fu—fuck off..." Will that work? No. 

"Do you understand what's going on right now?" 

Of course you fucking understand! You're not a just-hatched grub, for fuck's sake! "He's dead." 

"He's not dead. He got shot; you saw that, correct?" Rose's fingers hook into your hair and very gently pull until you give up and open your eyes. The patient look on her face makes you want to close them again, but you guess you shouldn't do that. "Which caused damage, of course it did, but he stopped time for himself almost immediately, so he couldn't bleed out." 

At this point you're willing to just fucking accept the idea that Dave can fuck with time. Sollux can power alien technology with his mind, why the fuck not add this shit to the mix? But. "He—wasn't breathing." 

"He is. Just...slowly. Wade might be able to tell you what the ratio is, when he comes back." 

"Where—" 

"Trying to bully someone into letting him into surgery with Dave." Her violet eyes go amused for a second. "Since he left his weapons outside, it's not going to work." 

"Surgery." That's not a word you actually know. Thanks to the tech that Sollux exploited to get all of you over here, most English words line up fine with Alternian. This is an exception, apparently.

"Um..." Rose hesitates, frowns, and looks over her shoulder at Hal. "You have Sollux online, right?" 

"Yeah, one sec." Hal's shades are hooked into the neckline of his shirt; he pulls them out and slips them on, mouthing words for a couple seconds before he pushes them up onto his forehead, ignoring the faint yellow text that you can just barely see scrolling across them. "Sol says it translates to, quote, 'mediculler shit'—" 

_Fuck_. You don't actually need to hear any more of that sentence; that's more than enough to make you let out another distressed wail and twist around to bury your face in Roxy's shoulder again. You're pretty sure people are looking. 

"Jeez, Hal, tell Sollux he fucked up his translation—" 

"I'd like to keep my shades in one piece, thanks!" Another hand joins Rose's on your head—you cannot fucking believe that you have three people trying to calm you down at once. Like what the _fuck_? "Look, the end meaning is that they're fixing him, okay?" 

" _Fixing_?" Are they fucking stupid? You twist away from Roxy's hold, overbalance, and topple off her lap and onto the floor. Dirk makes a decent attempt to catch you, which ultimately fails because your instinctive reaction is to bare your teeth and snarl at him. "They're going to cull him, what the fuck is wrong with you!" 

Everyone goes silent, at that. It's very fucking intimidating—you're sitting on the floor with four humans looking down at you with expressions you can't fucking read because _apparently_ this specific human family has fucked up ways of showing emotions! For all you know you just violated some fucking taboo that's going to get you and/or everyone around you culled—

Dirk pushes his shades up and slides off the chair he's been sitting in, kneeling in front of you. His eyes still fuck you up as much as the first time you saw them; they're white where troll eyes would be gold, yeah, but the caste ring around his pupils is almost-not-quite the color that your sclera are. You know that humans' caste rings don't fill at adulthood, but fuck, it's weird looking at him. 

"Karkat." 

" _What_!" Fuck, you've lost what little ability to modulate your volume that you had. 

Dirk winces at the volume. "Okay. Let's just...figure this out. Why exactly do you think the doctors are going to kill Dave?" 

"He's a fucking mutant!" Your voice goes soft on that word, at least; nice to know you still have some small sense of self-preservation. "He can't go to medicullers, they'll see his blood and they'll just fucking—they—" 

Hal darts down behind you, wrapping one arm around your shoulders and clamping his other hand over your mouth, muffling the distressed wail that's already started in your chest before it can make its way out. That's probably a good thing, but you can't help biting him. 

At least he doesn't shock you this time. Maybe it's because you don't quite draw blood. Then again, it has to still hurt. 

"Blood." Wow, Dirk looks more baffled than usual. 

"Alternians have a variety of blood colors, from common to—" Rose supplies, her eyes widening in what looks to you like surprise. "Oh, god—Karkat, he's not _that_ kind of mutant. We all have red blood, the same as you." 

You reach up and pull at Hal's hand until he relents, and spit out, "Of course you fucking do! You're mutants too, you've all fucking told me—" 

"For fuck's sake." Roxy rolls her eyes, grabbing Dirk's arm and pulling him along as she rises to her feet. "C'mon, Dirky." 

"Wait, where—" 

"I'm gonna distract somebody, you're gonna get a syringe for me, okay?" 

"Roxy, what the fuck?" 

"Try and calm Karkles down for a sec, okay? Be right back." 

She's out of the room and out of sight before you can protest that stupidass name. When Hal shifts his grip to scoop you up and lift you back into a chair, you can't find the energy to complain.

* * *

Roxy comes back twenty minutes later, according to the clock on the far wall. No one's tried to kick you out of here yet, which is nice. You suspect that whatever Roxy's planning on doing with the needle-tipped container that she's holding might change that, though. 

As she glances around the other few occupants of the room, Dirk comes back over to sit down in the same chair he vacated with an obviously irritated huff, holding out his arms until Hal lets go of you. You guess you _could_ be an asshole and refuse to move, but what's the fucking point? 

By the time you crawl across to Dirk and lean up against him, Roxy's leading a very fucking confused looking human over. It's a guy (you think) about the same age as you or Dave, with short hair that's a shade of teal you associate with a certain blind idiot. 

"This is Martin!" Roxy lets go of his hand, switching the needle thing from her left hand to her right. "Do me a favor and tell him what you told me, okay?" 

"Uh...I'm here because my mom had an allergic reaction to dish soap?" 

"The other thing." 

"Oh. I'm not a mutant."

"Cool, lemme see your hand." When he holds it out to her, Roxy jabs the tip of his middle finger with the needle. Apparently Martin was somewhat expecting, because he flinches but doesn't jerk away, and you see a bead of red well up almost immediately. "See? Normal?" 

"Ow." When nobody moves to stop him, Martin sticks that finger in his mouth for a second, then pulls it back out to examine it. "I though you were _kidding_ —" 

Roxy cuts him off by handing the needle thing over to Rose and grabbing Martin's shirt, pulling him up so she can smoosh her lips against his. That only barely looks like your definition of a kiss, but the guy seems satisfied; once Roxy lets him go, he gives her a confused smile and lets her shove him back towards the side of the room that he started on. 

"It's normal," Hal says gently, as Roxy settles herself back in the only empty chair in the circle. "It's okay. They won't hurt you. They won't hurt him." 

You're crying again, as you nod. When you shift to rub your face against Dirk's shirt, you almost immediately feel multiple hands on your head and back, all four of the humans trying to calm you through this.


	3. Chapter 3

With this much pale attention focused on you, you kind of lose all ability to pay attention to anything. Fuck, after maybe a minute you're limp and relaxed in Dirk's arms, completely oblivious to anything that isn't directly touching you, probably making the whole fucking chair vibrate with how hard and deep you're purring. 

The worry is still there. Even though you've been told, you've been _promised_ that your Dave will be okay, the concern doesn't just fucking evaporate. But it's pretty damn hard to focus on it when your body's trying to tell you that now is the safest and best time that you'll ever have to relax. 

It's right, anyway. You might as well calm the fuck down. 

So you do. You stop thinking, keep your eyes closed, don't quite fall asleep because you know yourself well enough to know that you can and will have catastrophic nightmares if you even think about passing out right now, and stop even trying to mark time in your head. 

This means that you have no fucking clue how long it is between the humans' first attempts to calm you, and the moment when a gloved hand comes down on your shoulder and Wade says, "Guess who woke up?" 

"Fuck off." That's automatic, as you reluctantly raise your head and bat Rose's hand away from your horns, scowling up at him. Fucking mask, shielding him from the full effect of your death glare. "Do I fucking look like I was asleep?" 

The rusty bastard has the temerity to laugh. "You guessed wrong, don't bite my head off over it. Growing that back would suck." 

"What." 

"It's Dave. Dave's awake—whoah there, kiddo!" Wade grabs your arm as you whine and try to launch yourself off Dirk's lap, holding you steady like he's a full-grown indigo. "Ca—

"If you tell me to calm down I will rip your fingers off and make _you_ eat them." You punctuate that with a snarl, which makes the confident bastard laugh again. 

But he does let you go. That victory is overshadowed by the fact that Hal grabs your wrist on one side, Roxy on the other, so you can't immediately follow through on your threat when Wade continues his sentence. 

"Calm down for like, one minute. Two minutes." (Fucker.) "Dave's awake. The doctors are kind of upset about that, since he should have enough drugs in his system to keep him out for a couple more hours at least, but hey, mutant powers are fun! Painkillers are working even if sedatives aren't, so he's not feeling the holes in him, which is nice; the holes are actually closing faster than I expected, also nice. He wants Karkat." 

Yes, you hear your name there. No, you do not actually connect that to what just got said for a couple seconds. Even then, you get it through your thick skull only because Roxy and Hal let go of your wrists, and Rose gives you a gentle push towards Wade. 

He holds out his hand. You fail to take it, or do anything more constructive than just staring blankly at the appendage offered to you. 

"Me." 

"Yep, you!" 

"Not his fucking siblings? Not D? Not _you_?" 

Wade huffs under his breath and gives up on waiting for you to actually take his hand, instead wrapping that arm around your shoulders and using that to steer you where he wants you to go. "Technically, D doesn't know about any of this, and while I feel like someone going to spill their guts soon, it's not going to be me and it's not _currently_ going to be Dave. He knows I'm fine, he trusts me to tell him if the other kids aren't fine, he really doesn't think _you're_ fine." 

"I'm fucking fine, dumbass." Not a goddamn scratch. 

"Then maybe he just wants you. Or he knows you need him." Wade shrugs and glances at the room number, then pulls the door open and pushes you through. 

He probably follows you in, too. You assume he closes the door. All that shit's guesswork, though, because once you step into the fucking room there's only one thing you have ganderbulbs for. 

Dave. It's Dave. Of course it's fucking Dave; he's laid out on a sleep platform that looks complicated enough that you almost want to worry that it'll hurt him somehow, on his side and facing you and attached to a shitload of wires that make you think of how a helmsman would be hooked into a living ship. They've taken his shirt, which you guess makes sense because how the fuck else would they get foreign objects out of him, but they _haven't_ put any kind of covering on the wounds on his chest. 

There's two of them: one high up on his shoulder, right at the corner of the hollow his collarbone makes with his throat, and one lower and to the left, maybe a third of the way up his ribs. For a moment you think there's a third wound, one that's still fresh and bleeding and not half-healed like the two you're seeing; then you take two shaky steps forward and realize that the dark stain across the left side of Dave's chest is something else. Art, feathers and gears and blades inked into his skin in red and black, completely obscuring the mess of scars under it. 

"Karkat," Dave mumbles, eyes just barely half open and _still_ grinning at you like there isn't multiple holes in him that shouldn't fucking be there, "c'mere. Bed." 

"I'm pretty sure that's not allowed, Dave." You take the last couple steps and sit down anyway, balancing yourself on the very edge. You can't actually look anywhere but his face, not without feeling your place in the universe start to spin and shift and go tilted. "...fuck." 

"Yeah. 's kinda messy." Dave rolls his eyes and stretches his arms out towards you, wincing either from the effort or because moving like that puts more stress on the not-quite-healed scars he's just picked up. 

It doesn't really matter which it is, because you immediately grab for his hands and he immediately laces his fingers through yours and squeezes and _fuck_ this is something like a quadrant. This is a reason for you to panic, because you're Feeling Things for a half-dead alien and this isn't how shit's supposed to go. This isn't what you ever wanted, if you were going to survive long enough to do the romantic bullshit you were damn well going to _do the romantic bullshit_ , have it be with moonlight confessions and passionate dates and—

"Wanna go back to sleep," Dave tells you, and _fuck_ , you're never going to see anything better than the way he rolls his head to the side, forces his mutant red eyes open enough to really look at you, smiles like everything's always going to be okay. "Lie down wi' me?" 

"I'm very fucking sure that's not allowed." Like that's going to stop you. Wade might stop you, but you very deliberately don't look over your shoulder to see what he thinks; you just gently pull your hands free of Dave's, kick at the stupid fucking tennis shoes that Dirk picked out for you (what the hell is a tennis, anyway?) until they give up their hold on your feet, swing your legs up so you can settle down facing him, your back to the door, one arm pinned under you and the other coming up to hunt for horns that aren't there in hair that's the exact opposite color it should be. 

Dave seems to be happy with the contact even if he lacks the appendages needed to really appreciate it, though. His eyes close again, and he shifts to drape one half-limp arm over your shoulders, tangle his fingers up in the hair at the nape of your neck and tug until you get the message on what he wants, shift forward until he's satisfied. 

You get nervous the closer you get, of course. What if you hurt him? He's already hurt, what if you make that shit worse? What if— "Dave..." 

"You're good. Great." Your forehead bumps against Dave's, and his grip on your hair loosens. He doesn't quite let go, though, just relaxes enough that he can't be said to be holding you in place. "Doesn't hurt, y'know." 

"Wade said that." _Now_ you begin to believe it.

"Mmm. 's okay, man." 

"I know." You realize that you're mirroring Dave, your arm draped over his bare shoulders and fingers carefully twined in his hair. Your palm's pressed flat against the side of his neck; you can feel the steady beat of his blood making its way to or from his heart. 

" 'm okay. You okay?"

"Scared as fuck, for a while there." There's other shit you could say— _I thought I fucking lost you_ or _don't ever do that to me again_ or _don't ever make me leave you_ —but you settle on something else. "Weren't you tired?" 

"Yeah." He's so fucking close. You can _feel_ him smile. "Stay here." 

"That's the plan, Dave." Stay here. Go to sleep. Stay with him. 

You can handle that.


End file.
